


lead a horse to water

by Engineer104



Series: I Would Write 500 Words (and I Would Write 500 More) [25]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Fluff, Gen, In the Time Skip, Pre-Relationship, Rain, Reunions, i guess?, what do I tag this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:40:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28433301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Engineer104/pseuds/Engineer104
Summary: In want of a horse, Leonie treks through a storm when an old classmate happens upon her and offers her a ride to her destination.
Relationships: Lorenz Hellman Gloucester/Leonie Pinelli
Series: I Would Write 500 Words (and I Would Write 500 More) [25]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1591699
Comments: 10
Kudos: 24
Collections: Those Who Drabble in the Dark





	lead a horse to water

**Author's Note:**

> For the Felannie Fever drabble prompt “reunion”
> 
> Finally some leorenz (writing a new pair is always awkward). enjoy!

Leonie, as a rule, would always make do with what she had. Waste not, want not - she wouldn’t call it her motto (she wasn’t a noble with fancy house words) but it was a phrase to live by.

Unfortunately, she still needed a good, well-bred horse if she wanted anyone to take her seriously as a mercenary, and that meant saving coin piecemeal. As she counted what her last job - a simple matter of capturing a deserter and returning him alive to his liege lord - netted her one little sliver of silver at a time, dread curdled deeper in her stomach.

It would take her months, perhaps years, to save enough to buy a good, powerful horse, and one she would have to work hard to keep alive, and to keep fed and stabled if they traveled through towns. She almost longed for her year at the Officers’ Academy, when students rode the Monastery’s horses for training and on missions.

She’d been spoiled then, Leonie realized now, spoiled by having a hardy horse to ride, to train, to  _ learn _ , and between returning to her isolated little village of farmers and trappers and leaving again to seek her own work, she missed that horse that was never hers.

And if she had a horse of her own, she wouldn’t have to walk everywhere, much less in the pouring rain.

Leonie tugged the hood of her cloak higher, as if that did anything to keep water off her face. Her boots splashed through puddles with mud caking them, and she nearly tripped over a pothole on the road. Lightning arced across the gray sky, and if the rain didn’t let up she’d have to give up on making it into the next village before nightfall.

It was so dark, the clouds overhead so thick, that Leonie couldn’t even tell how near to sunset it was.

That was probably the least of her problems. She’d had the foresight to unstring her bow once the storm threatened, but the dampness in the air could still ruin the string and the spare tucked deep into her patchy rucksack. The sole of one of her boots had a hole through which water seeped in, and she shivered as a thunderclap rattled her bones.

It was so loud it covered the creaking of wheels approaching from behind until the splashing of horses’ hooves through water reached her as they drew a carriage down the road.

Those poor beasts, made to work in the rain despite any fear of thunder, all for some stuffy noble or rich merchant too self-important to find shelter and—

The carriage slowed as it passed her, and only a light spray of mud splattered against her cloak. Leonie grimaced but didn’t bother wiping it off. She would just get muddy again before the rain let up, and mud never really bothered her.

She’d been muddy, cold, and wet often enough in Sauin; a little dirt on the road was almost a blessing so long as she could see the world and make her own coin.

And then the carriage ground to a halt a little ahead of her.

Leonie halted mid-step and rested a hand on her bow before remembering it was useless in the rain. Still, that did little to ease the tension building in her shoulders as the carriage door opened and a bare head poked out.

“Leonie?”

...why did the stuffy noble in the carriage know her name?

She took a cautious step towards them, heart in her throat, and when she recognized the face her jaw dropped. “ _ Lorenz _ ?”

“Why are you traveling during a storm, Leonie?” Lorenz wondered, heedless to the rain plastering his violently violet hair to his head. “You look cold.”

“I-I am cold,” she said. “N-not all of us can take a carriage on the road, you know.”

“Of course,” he agreed. “Come in, my driver will take you wherever you need to go.” He further pushed open the door, wide enough she would be able to slip inside, and plenty wide enough that rain would be dripping in and pooling on the floor too.

Leonie didn’t move, perhaps frozen in place by the cold. “What if I need to get all the way to the Bridge?” she said. “Or maybe I’m going to Enbarr; would you give me a ride all the way to Enbarr?” She wasn’t sure why she was being difficult, only that a part of her was wary of how far Lorenz’s kindness - or charity, more likely - would extend.

“You would travel to Enbarr in the middle of a war?” he said.

“I…” Damn him, he always found her on the wrong foot.

“Let’s go,” Lorenz said. “I doubt my driver appreciates the cold and wet anymore than you do.”

That, at last, forced her to move.

Leonie hopped into the carriage, wincing as her boots tracked mud into the pristine interior. She perched on the edge of the seat opposite Lorenz as he shut the door and the carriage once more lurched into motion, her stomach moving with it.

It rolled briskly down the road despite the rain, and between that, the rain pelting the roof, and the horses’ hooves, the sound of thunder was muted inside.

Leonie tried not to stare at the richness of the carriage or to lean back against her plush seat. She clasped her hands in her lap and pretend she wasn’t staring at Lorenz from the corner of her eye.

His hair was longer than she remembered from a few years ago at the Officers’ Academy, but other than that he didn’t seem to have changed. He sat comfortably in his own seat, dressed in well-made traveling garb and in shining boots, and a book lay open on his lap.

Leonie couldn’t imagine reading anything while moving as her stomach lurched with every unsteady motion of the carriage. Her heart beat against her ribs, and she tried to think of something to say - maybe to apologize for the mud staining the polished wooden floor - before Lorenz wondered, “Where are you heading, Leonie?”

“Oh, just to the next village,” she said, shrugging. “I thought I’d be able to make it there by nightfall, but I didn’t know it would start raining when I set out this morning.”

“You don’t have a horse?”

She tried not to wince, but judging by the sympathetic -  _ pitiable _ \- smile Lorenz offered her she doubted she succeeded. “No,” she admitted, “I don’t.”

Leonie held her breath, waiting for him to express shock, or to ask her how a wannabe mercenary like her could work and take jobs without a mount, or perhaps to insist that it was all right not to have one, that commoners didn’t need a horse and the dignity one offered like a noble did.

“That’s unfortunate,” he said instead. “I always envied how easily you handled yours at the Academy.”

She didn’t care for praise, much less empty words meant to console, yet still the tips of her ears warmed under her hood. “Well, thanks, Lorenz,” she said. “Wish I had one now, but I’m still saving up. Maybe I’ll be able to afford to buy one by the Millennium Festival.” Her too-light coin purse begged to differ, but if there was one thing she did not want it was Lorenz’s noble pity.

Pity didn’t pay to put food in her belly and a drink in her hand and a warm place to sleep, any more that it would give her enough coin to buy a horse off a reputable breeder in the middle of a war.

They lapsed into silence with only the sound of the rain hitting the carriage roof and thunder growing more distant as the storm eased, which said nothing of the unholy screeching of the carriage wheels. Leonie fidgeted in her seat as she rubbed her arms, still chilled despite the shelter.

At last, Lorenz spoke up, “Are you taking a...job in the next village?”

“I don’t have one waiting for me,” she said, “but I’ll probably search for one before moving on, just in case someone needs my help.”

“So you haven’t been spoken for?”

“ _ Spoken _ for?” Leonie snorted, unable to help her amusement as a smile prodded at her lips. “You make it sound like finding a job means I’m getting engaged.”

His cheeks colored as he said, “That’s definitely not how I meant it. I only wondered if someone had already hired you, and if you were traveling for a mission or still in search of one.”

“Oh,” she said. “Well, I’m looking for one.” She crossed her legs and found it in her to relax, perhaps set at ease by a return to...something of their usual from their days as students, even if most of their conversations turned into philosophical arguments about nobility and the role of commoners in the picture-perfect world that Lorenz thought he inhabited. “Any of your noble fellows hiring? I’m specialized in capturing deserters these days.”

Lorenz sighed in picture-perfect disdain. “An unsavory task,” he noted, “and unfortunate that it should be necessary while every house is braced for war. But no, I’m not aware of—wait!” He straightened, smiling. “As a matter of fact, my father might be eager to hire someone. Lord Acheron is giving us problems again.”

“No kidding,” Leonie said. “Count Gloucester, huh?”

“He’ll pay you quite well too,” Lorenz told her. “Should you choose to accept, of course. It might even be enough for you to purchase a war horse to your liking.”

She stiffened all over again, and her blood rushed past her ears. “Lorenz,” she said, “I don’t need your charity, even if you are disguising it as a job.”

“I am not—”

“Does your father  _ really _ need a solo mercenary who doesn’t have her own damn horse?” Leonie demanded. “Or are you just making that up to do me a favor?”

Lorenz, to her surprise, didn’t quail under her glare. He crossed his arms and said, “And why should I not do a friend of mine a favor?”

“Because—” She cut herself off out of frustration. “Life isn’t that easy.” Not that someone like him would understand what it would be like to be in his debt, not when he could put out a driver to travel in a comfortable, dry carriage while it rained.

“Leonie, please,” Lorenz said, and his warm hand covered hers. “I don’t offer to make you uncomfortable, it’s only—”

“I’m not uncomfortable,” Leonie lied, “and if you say that it’s your duty as a noble, I’m not waiting for the carriage to stop before opening the door and jumping out.”

He recoiled to her gratification (or disappointment), his eyes wide with shock. “I only want to help,” he said. “And giving you a horse would not be charity but a service for Fodlan when it needs mercenaries like you.”

“Like me?” She scoffed, “Now you’re just flattering me.”

“I promise I am not,” Lorenz insisted. “It would be a shame to deprive Fodlan of a capable fighter like you simply because you don’t have a horse for quicker travel.”

Leonie frowned. “I don’t know, Lorenz… It’s one thing to bandage a wounded ankle, another entirely to hire me for a job that doesn’t exist to pay me coin I’m not earning.”

He laughed. “Leonie, a job always exists,” he said. “You need only ask.”

She stared at him, still skeptical, but she couldn’t deny that his offer wasn’t...tempting. “Fine,” she said after a moment, “I’ll take you up on this. I’m tired of tracking down deserters anyway.”

Lorenz smiled and leaned back in his seat. “Perfect,” he said. “Then away to Gloucester Estate we go, though I suppose we might as well stop the night in the village you mentioned. Is there an inn?”

“Oh, no,” Leonie said, and now it was her turn to laugh. “It’s way too small for that. I usually pay a couple farmers to spend a night in their barn. Hay makes a comfortable bed, and cows are pretty good company.”

His eyes widened with an almost genteel horror, but she just smiled.

Some things never changed, but at least he hadn’t tried to  _ give _ her a horse.

**Author's Note:**

> maybe now that i’ve finally got a complete leorenz fic under my belt i can finish the “Lorenz gets into a bar fight” WIP
> 
> anyway the real hero of this is Lorenz’s poor driver. get the man an umbrella and a warm drink ;_;


End file.
